Half Knowledge

Written by

Brij Sachdeva

There is no such thing as Complete Knowledge

You might have heard these famous phrases.

• Half knowledge is worse than no knowledge.
• Neem Hakeem Khatra  Jaan.
• A half-truth is equivalent to a lie.

First, there is no such thing as complete knowledge. Hence there is no anything as half knowledge. It is all relative.

Osho, in his discourses, has many times told a story about Mahatma Buddha. On a certain day Buddha, along with his chief disciple, Ananda, was passing through a forest. Being fall time, all the trees were shedding leaves and appearing almost naked. The forest was full of dry leaves.  Dry leaves were visible as far as the sight could go. They were enjoying the sound of dry leaves moving in the blowing wind.

Ananda asked Buddha,” Bhagwan, I have been listening to your discourses for so many years. You have spoken on almost every aspect of life. But I was trying to ask you "How much more is left to be said?”

Buddha took a few dry leaves in his hand and said,” What I have said up to now is equivalent to these few leaves in my hand, but what is remaining is equivalent to all the leaves in the forest.”

One day we were ignorant about how polio can be eradicated from this world and we lost so many lives. So many people became handicapped. Then we, by and by gathered more knowledge and we became able to eradicate polio from the world. But we have not yet been able to find a cure for so many other diseases like AIDS. We are still fighting with tuberculosis however with the help of whatsoever half knowledge we have. Tuberculosis is getting more resistant day by day. Now MDR (Multi Drug Resistant) TB has emerged. One day we shall be having enough knowledge to eradicate tuberculosis. When we were ignorant, we were fighting. Now we have become more knowledgeable, we are still fighting. When we will become even more knowledgeable, even then we will be fighting. One day we will eradicate AIDS too. Then new diseases would emerge. That would be more dangerous. Then we will need more knowledge to tackle these diseases. 

There is no end to knowledge. Complete knowledge is an illusion and hence the half knowledge too. This much or that much, it is always incomplete. So, there is no such thing as complete or half-knowledge. Knowledge, little or too much, is never enough or complete.

False Knowledge is more Dangerous than Ignorance or Half Knowledge

Ignorance is a simply, the lack of knowledge; while false knowledge is holding wrong information and believing it is the truth.

George Bernard Shaw has said,"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance"

An ignorant person usually stays quiet or acts with caution because they know that they are ignorant. A person with false knowledge spreads misinformation with total confidence. In my blog post “Ravana Delusion” I have explained how people gather misinformation about Ravana and go on spreading it with overwhelming confidence.

See also: AGI- THE ARTIFICIAL GOD